Black testifies more funds were needed

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Black testifies more funds were needed
Wed, 04-14-2004 - 12:12pm
Cofer Black testified before the commission that the CIA needed more funds:

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/18761.htm

April 14, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The chief of the CIA counterterrorism center on Sept. 11, 2001, testified yesterday that his overworked team of agents was consumed with stopping Osama bin Laden - but just didn't have enough money or manpower to prevent the attacks.

"We are profoundly sorry. We did all we could. We did our best," Cofer Black, now the State Department's special terrorism ambassador, told the 9/11 commission.

Black said he talked with CIA counterterrorism colleagues, including many officers who remain undercover, before testifying to ask what they wanted him to relay.

Black said they told him, "Make them understand how few we were and what we had to deal with."

"When I started this job in 1999, I thought there was a good chance I would be sitting right here," Black said, referring to his witness seat before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.

Black said his center was constantly running out of money and sometimes, like at the end of 2000, it simply overspent its budget.

He said bin Laden's own public pledge to kill Americans at home gave him reason to believe an attack in the United States might be in the works.

But Black said there was nothing in the intelligence pointing to a strike like the one that occurred.